EVENTS

…And I’m The Delusional One?

Just a quick little thought, as we draw the week to a happy close and prepare for some well-earned weekend rest…One will often notice the language surrounding discussion of trans people, and our gender, carrying the implicit suggestion that our gender identity isn’t real, that we’re mistaken about that. Sometimes it comes in subtle forms, such as “Miranda Rae, who was born a man but believes she is a woman”, and sometimes is more overt and malicious, such as “we’re being forced to tolerate people’s delusions that they belong to the opposite sex!” or “putting on a dress and some lipstick doesn’t make a man into a woman, and we shouldn’t pretend he’s something he’s not or encourage it!”

The thing that’s really starting to get to me about this is that the justifications people use for their assertions that our gender isn’t “real”, that we’re “really” our assigned sex, that we’re “delusional”, that our gender identification is “absurd” or “ridiculous”, are things like …well… God. You know, the invisible supernatural entity in the sky who according to many made the world in seven days and will burn you in a pit of fire if you engage in homosexuality. Or if not God, things like “male and female energies” or various pseudo-scientific explanations and “sexological” theories about evolutionary roles and “misdirected erotic drives”.

We’re also treated to assertions by some that their religious beliefs are not being respected if they are not permitted the capacity to tell us our gender identities are “delusional” and not true. As in, we’re not showing due respect to their cray-cray beliefs if they don’t get to tell us our justified belief is cray-cray.

Yeah.

F’realzies.

Now, I could be all “tra la la, your silly unsubstantiated beliefs don’t trump my silly unsubstantiated beliefs, so let’s just agree to disagree. We’re all entitled to our opinions!” …but, um, as said, my belief in my being a woman is not unsubstantiated, it’s justified. Under all definitions of gender that make sense, I can reasonably defend my right to identify as a woman, and even under most sensible definitions of sex, I can at the very least make a compelling case that I’m more female than I am male. I can actually show you physical evidence, like serum estradiol and testosterone levels. Or my breasts (not that I will show you them, I’m just saying I can).

But God? Nothing.

So it’s not just a case of hypocrisy. It’s a case of… um…. I don’t know. What’s the word for when you accuse somebody of something that isn’t at all true of them but is deeply true of you? Sort of like “projection”, but more objective and concrete. Is there a word for that? If not, I’ll coin one: “Derpocrisy.”

So let’s just make a note here. If you believe in the literal existence of any of the following…

Yup. Also, various groups calling themselves “The Illuminati” have existed (and do!), though they aren’t and never have been a massive globe-spanning intentional conspiracy to control all information and/or money (WTO probably comes closest to this, though it doesn’t call itself “The Illuminati”). Out-of-body experiences actually happen, too; they’re dissociative episodes predicated by stress, psychosis, lucid dreaming/meditation (particular brain states), or drug use (particularly LSD and LSA). They don’t have any mystical significance, but people really do sometimes perceive their consciousnesses to be dislocated from their physical forms. The 9/11/2001 airplane crashes WERE demolitions, controlled by the hijackers (that’s likely the most pedantic point I can nit-pick). And of course “psychics” actually do exist (though they’re not capable of remote viewing, gaining mystical knowledge, or prognostication), and astrology and reiki are real practices, just rituals without any discernible mechanisms of action or effects.

I’m perfectly happy to let anyone self-identify as whatever biological or social gender sie wishes, because I recognize that the categories are not simply descriptive (of various hormonal levels, expressed physical traits, or genetic profiles – however one wishes to parse “male” and “female”) but are productive/performative. They enact socially-constructed meaning, serve as semiotic signifiers, and so self-identification in that sense is always valid and always political. What I take issue with is what I think are bad arguments/justifications put forward on the basis of discredited theoretical models of gender (be it social or biological) like naturalism and essentialism, or ‘identity’ (as stable, essentialized/intrinsic, and transcultural/transhistorical). Unfortunately, this usually only comes up with respect to trans people, as they’re the only ones walking around asserting the validity of their gender self-identifications (on what I frequently find to be shaky grounds), because their gender self-identifications are frequently interrogated and subjected to demands of justification: cisgendered people simply presume their own identity validity which is rarely questioned, so I don’t really have as much opportunity to challenge their equally-spurious claims of gender essentialism of any sort (they react just as badly on the rare occasions that I do).

I’m actually a little unsure of what to do with such a perspective. On the one hand, I don’t want to start running around questioning the self-identifications of cisgendered people and then challenging their justifications in order to try to balance things out, because I don’t think this is appropriate behavior when it’s done to trans, cisgendered, or genderqueer people. On the other hand, when challenges ARE leveled and I see someone making what I think is a bad argument for essentialism, I’m disinclined to simply let that slide (because I think challenging gender essentialism AT ALL is the most direct and most theoretically-robust route to trans acceptance – if we can get people to acknowledge that ALL gender is a social construct, the argument that trans self-identification is not valid because it’s not ‘real’ falls apart, since cis self-ID isn’t ‘real’ either), but unfortunately this happens almost exclusively when the subject is a trans person’s identification, not a cis person’s identification, so it creates an imbalance. The reactive-only behavior results in a disparate impact. Maybe I can both challenge the validity of questioning self-identification when a trans person’s ID is questioned and then challenge the idea of gender essentialism at all, without referring specifically to either trans or cis self-identification, or referring specifically to both the trans person being questioned AND the cis person doing the questioning?

I was trying to tell my parents the story about the trans woman who got denied access to the dressing room in Macy’s and my mom wondered whether the person in question was a man dressed as a woman or a woman dressed as a man. I kind of gave up rather than pressing the point. I don’t think i want to introduce them to my trans girlfriend anytime soon.

But what of us who do not believe in that list. (Well, except for UFO’s. Probable. But why would a technologically advanced species want to deal with such a backwards backwater.) And also do not think that your gender is a delusion?

I had a friend for a while who believed in that. And “magick.” And a goddess. And 9/11 “truth.” And altie medicine, because disbelief in same was “scientism.”

BTW, this is the same person who agrees with Peter Levenda that the Nazis were trying to control Europe with “magick” and who also thinks that, in Illuminatus!, Robert Anton Wilson was literally describing a “magickal initiation” scene instead of mocking the concept.

In fairness to your friend, quite a few Nazis were trying to take over Europe with the help of occult power. It just didn’t add anything to the process of trying to conquer Europe with tanks and guns and the like.

“Under all definitions of gender that make sense, I can reasonably defend my right to identify as a woman, and even under most sensible definitions of sex, I can at the very least make a compelling case that I’m more female than I am male.”

Would you mind writing a post about that? I think it would be really great to have something to show people when they start in with their ignorance. Might even change a few hearts and minds. I’d write it myself but I’m not much of a writer.

Oh yes, belief in trickle down economics should definitely be on that list and probably several other items from the social conservative agenda as well.
Maybe this list should be put on some sort of permanent display or part of a disclaimer: “If you believe in any item on the list, this blog may offend you.”

WHAT! I thought the founding fathers were the illuminati. Humans, yes, but very long lived due to a ‘vampire’ serum that the Rosicrucians produced in the 1450’s in southern France. Real vampires are a myth, of course.

Hmm… popular urban legends about trans people… I don’t know many, because I quite frankly don’t care and I don’t have to listen to the people who read Transsexualism for dummies and hence are now experts on the subject, but the blog has taught me a few:

– Transsexuals* are actually very, very homosexual

– Trans women are really out to capture men and turn them gay

– And hide in women’s bathrooms and have their way with any woman who walks by

– Transsexuals have no sense of privacy and will gladly answer questions about their genitals

– The polite ‘pronoun’ to use for a transsexual is ‘it’

– Transitioning takes about a week and is completely pain-free

– The appropriate response when being approached by a transsexual is to hit him. Her. It.

Greta Christina wrote a while back on the idea that it doesn’t actually matter whether people were born gay or not. As usual she was spot-fucking-on.

In that theme, I think it also doesn’t matter whether you simply believe you are a female or if you are actually a female. If you merely believe you are a woman, you cause no actual harm to anyone by presenting as female. If you are actually female, you cause not actual harm to anyone by presenting as female.

Of course the fact that you have evidence makes your assertion far more weightier then theirs but in this circumstance much like in Greta’s post on homosexuality, it shouldn’t and doesn’t matter.

I will admit that I am fairly new to feminism. That is not to say I am new to fighting sexism. I am a fairly well educated female in a part of the country that suffers from extremely poor education. I have been fighting sexism as a means of survival through staggering pools of idiocy for most my life.

Fighting overt sexism is obviously highly different than actively working toward an egalitarian culture. It becomes far more nuanced (interesting too) when we investigate these subtle ways that privilege affects our daily lives.

One of the reasons it took me this long to really start paying attention (other than busyness with working and school and parenting) is some of the negative stereotypes surrounding some feminists. They are not unfounded feminist stereotypes. These types of feminists exist. What I had to learn though was that they were not representative of the entire movement (much like asswipes like Bill Maher are not representative of all atheists).

It is a learning process. I am grateful for the reasonable people who stand up and denounce the kinds of bile spewed by the kinds of feminists who could so casually consider a transgender woman “not a real woman.” The idea that they know what is is to be a “real woman” is so erroneous and sickening that often I can’t find the words. I know it comes from a place of fear but reasonable people do not let unfounded assumptions paralyze us from pursuing a moral path toward welcoming diversity.

I don’t know what a “real woman” is. I don’t have a checklist and I don’t know where these people get their checklists unless they make it up as they go along like people do with god. What I do know is that Natalie Reed tells me that she is a woman and I believe her. It does not serve me or humanity to disbelieve her existence as such. Mostly it doesn’t matter why she is a woman. Be it belief, hormones, genetics, or childhood toys, the why is inconsequential. What matters is that she is and that people respect it.

I tend to think that the person is the mind is the brain. If the brain says ‘female’, you’re fucking female. You’re not to blame if your body didn’t develop in the right way for your brain.*

It seems to me that to change the brain to the same ‘setting’ as the body would require a fundamental change in the individual’s personality. Far better to change the body to suit the person than the person to suit the body.

*I realise that the divide between brain and body probably isn’t as clean cut as that, but I consider my description one of those useful ‘lies-to-children’.

I was told that in 7th grade biology/sex-ed, but I didn’t accept it. I kind of pretended to accept it because I knew that’s what my teacher wanted and because I didn’t feel like making a fuss, but I didn’t honestly accept it. Because. Come on!

I think that transgenderism is sufficiently counter-intuitive that for a lot of people the only way to get it and accept it is to see people who are trans in reality. Or maybe on TV, although I realize that’s a whole different can of worms in terms of how it can be interpreted by the viewer.

Did you watch tonight’s What Would You Do? One of the scenarios was a teenage boy telling his mom that he “wants” to be a girl. (Didn’t you say something in a tweet about how a trans person would say “I am a girl,” not “I want to be”…?)

Pros: Decent intro on the struggle trans people face being accepted (featuring everyone’s favourite trans posterboy chauvinist, Chaz Bono 9_9); quite a few people spoke up to defend the kid.
Cons: LOTS of conflating gender identity with sexuality and assuming that all trans women like men.

Sorry, seemed relevant since the language used (by the actors – kid and mom – and the marks) also smacked of “he’s really a boy but thinks he’s a girl so let’s humor him.”

Sometimes, people have thoughts and feelings they need to articulate before they know the “right” things to say. I’ve had people in private talk to me (because they don’t know where else to turn) saying things like “I just want to be a cute girl”. That’s where compassion comes into play, and instead of correcting the person (btw, not accusing anyone here of that) I go for encouragement. I help them see how they already are so much, and that they have at least one person who won’t question them. Then I share a vast quantity of internet resources with them, for I am The Nerd, and linkspam is my specialty.

“he’s really a boy but thinks he’s a girl so let’s humor him.”
And yeah… I think a lot of people who are fresh into their transliness are hyperaware of this reaction from everybody else, at least I was. And still am, actually. It’s hard to feel taken seriously when people still use those old pronouns and otherwise lump me into the wrong box in casual conversation. I hesitate to view people’s reactions to someone’s gender as any sort of evidence for their gender whatsoever.

Sometimes, people have thoughts and feelings they need to articulate before they know the “right” things to say.

This!

Take a child, teach them that gender and sex are the same thing and that they’re completely defined by primary sexual characteristics and where they change for PE and of cause they’ll express their gender identity within this framework. A kid with a penis is unlikely to insist that they actually are female if they’ve been taught that being female is completely dependant on having a V.J, and vice versa.

Excellent point from both of you. I still remember being amazed when I started “getting into” feminism at all these things and feelings and situations which I had experienced but had never been able to articulate, or explain why they affected me the way they did. I certainly would not have had the proper vocabulary to discuss feminist or LGBT/queer issues (without sounding ridiculously ignorant and probably offensive) five or ten years ago. So I can definitely see how someone raised without that framework (most of us, unfortunately) would struggle to put what they felt into words. Which is more than a little heartbreaking, when you think about it.

Under all definitions of gender that make sense, I can reasonably defend my right to identify as a woman, and even under most sensible definitions of sex, I can at the very least make a compelling case that I’m more female than I am male. I can actually show you physical evidence, like serum estradiol and testosterone levels. Or my breasts (not that I will show you them, I’m just saying I can).

I’m not sure I want to be friends with women who won’t show me their breasts. Just sayin’. 😛

Anyway, I hear you and I agree with you – but I think it’s a tactical error to motivate your sex and gender like that. Instead we should be focusing on asking the question – why should a person have to motivate hir sexual identity at all? If we agree that all humans have a right to self-determination, to be ends in themselves rather than means to an end – why not extend this to sexual identity?

It would surprise me if you didn’t already agree with me, but I think this cannot be said enough. Use of terms like ‘unnatural’ or ‘against nature’ is rhetorical sleight of hand, it’s misdirection. This is a moral and political question, not a question for the natural sciences.

I think that transgenderism is sufficiently counter-intuitive that for a lot of people the only way to get it and accept it is to see people who are trans in reality.

Exactly. I like to think that I would have come to understand something about transgendered people by now, but in fact, I had a friend in high school who once confided that she (I use that pronoun because she did) was really a boy inside, that she had been born in the wrong body. It wasn’t something that I had ever heard of (this was a distressingly long time ago–I am getting old). I didn’t know that this was something that happened to some people. I just knew my friend was miserable. Years later I was grateful that I knew her (I mean aside from the fact that she was a good friend, something I seldom had growing up), because it made an understanding of the reality of the situation much easier for me.

What it comes down to, for me, who the fuck are you to tell me how to dress, or how to view who I am? Natalie says she’s a woman. That makes her a woman. I say I am a woman. That makes me a woman. The fact that I am cis-gendered and she is not is not the point.

The ideal would be to have every primary school class be visited by at least one person from every minority that they are likely to encounter in life.

I still remember several of the “meet a minority person” events that I had in primary school and I think that they still shape my images about each of those minorities quite a bit. I still seem to think that Christians from obscure denominations are raving lunatics, that Hindus are mellow middle class people, that gay people are average guys and girls who you’d never guess were gay if they weren’t out, that drug addicts are sensitive people who lucked out in their teens or early twenties, and so on and so fourth. (Actually, scratch the part about gay people. I’ve met enough of them that I no longer have a stereotype.)

These stereotypes are not great, but they are probably a lot better than pure and utter prejudice. (I should probably say that I don’t have anything against Christians from obscure denominations.)

I posted a bit of your writing as a quote on my facebook page, citing you.

I had to, it was great.

FYI what I copied over was:
‎”‘Derpocrisy.’ – not just a case of hypocrisy. It’s a case of when you accuse somebody of something that isn’t at all true of them but is deeply true of you? Sort of like “projection”, but more objective and concrete.” – Natalie Reed, March 9, 2012

I have a bunch of ideas on this subject, but the one that’s currently winning is this one:

I’m a straight cis-male asshole, a zero on the Kinsey scale. Which of course makes me perfectly able to identify with gay and trans folks!

… once I get past that I’m an asshole, of course. Which I am, and for which I apologize and beg for undeserved forgiveness.

Anyhoo.

I have almost no childhood memories. I literally remember nothing before I was 5-6 years old. I barely remember being 6-8 years old. I didn’t start forming complete memories until I was 8-9 years old. Everything after I was 10 years old seems to match other people’s memories. One of the most vivid memories I have from before my 10th birthday is of a girl named Rachel that was in my 5th grade class. She was HOT to my 8-9 year old mind. I mean DAMN, like Jessica Alba hot. Then when I was in 6th grade, there was this girl names Lori who I had a giant maddening crush on for a whole year… until the next crush which was Robin the following year and all through high school. All of these feelings were like sledgehammers to my brain. 25+ years later, I still remember how that felt.

So yeah, I sort of feel like I “get” being trans. I can’t imagine the specific feeling, but I think I can imagine the strength of it, the way it would overpower everything else. I can imagine that rejecting your biology and upbringing would require that sort of passion and strength of feeling that would drive someone to seek out what feels right in the face of family and society potentially rejecting them. I can at least understand how someone can feel their identity so strongly that it means so much to them, and that’s not a choice or a delusion.

Compared to that, I can’t identify with the people who dismiss being trans. Not even a little bit. I can’t imagine having so little passion in my life that I can’t empathize with other people enough to accept that they can legitimately feel compelled to follow their hearts wherever it leads. It is easier to imagine waking up and knowing that I should be a woman, than to imagine waking up and casually dismissing that knowledge as crazy or delusional.

I have almost no childhood memories. I literally remember nothing before I was 5-6 years old. I barely remember being 6-8 years old. I didn’t start forming complete memories until I was 8-9 years old. Everything after I was 10 years old seems to match other people’s memories.

Most people’s memories are like that, but human brains are eager to fill in the blanks with stuff that they think might have happened. Maybe you’re a skeptic?

I have fragments of memories of being 5 and and having a bit of a crush on one of the girls in my preschool. The teachers caught on to it and literally cheered for me. It’s easy being straight…

All my memories are fragments. I can’t say I remember being 2, or remember being 3, but I have very specific memories from those years that have been corroborated. Like I have very fuzzy memories of my mom’s pregnancy after me, and remember when I my little brother was born (this would be September ’86, and I would have been about 2 years and 5 months), and asking to carry him on the walk to the car (a buick station wagon with faux wood panelling on the exterior) and being told (rightly) that I was too little. I have memories of living in our little apartment complex in Halifax behind the IWK Children’s Hospital (which we lived near to accommodate my frequent asthma attacks), remember a nightmare I had there, and even remember during one stay the nurses putting up the crib bars on the bed.

Then I have more frequent, but still fragmentary, memories of living in Montreal from ’87 to ’90, and when I went back to the neighbourhood I grew up in this past November (St. Anne de Bellevue), and saw the old house, I could even remember how to get to the bus stop where we caught the school bus, which building the depeneur had been where we’d bought our candy, and located the old department store on Rue St. Anne with the pneuomatic tubes for delivering orders. Etc.

And from ’90 onward, when I was 6 and we moved to Chester, Nova Scotia, my memories get pretty darn solid. I’m sure I could still find my way around Chester, no problem, even though it’s been nine years since I last visited.

I’m planning a post for later this week about how we use narrative and stories to help maintain (and construct) our memories… like how we turn those fragments and bits and pieces into these sort of plot arcs that may or may not really correspond to reality, but in telling them as stories we allow ourselves to better remember the “important” / salient points… though at the cost, perhaps, of the memories being somewhat distorted to fit the narrative.

Part of it, I think, is that my family was robbed when I was a child, and we lost EVERYTHING. Not in the normal sense of all the good stuff being stolen. Literally EVERYTHING. The house was emptied while we were out, and when we came home the house was empty like no one had ever lived there. Every picture was taken off of the walls, every stitch of clothing was gone, every bite of food was removed from the refrigerator, there was NOTHING.

I guess that a lot of people build memories based on pictures and toys and just general stuff, that they had when they were small and still had as they grew up and that their parents drag out to reinforce those memories. I never had any of those objects that would anchor a memory.

It may not be that, actually. I have basically zero memories of my childhood, but I don’t have any incident like that int he past. Pretty much all the memories I have are reconstructed from things others have told me, and this is a rolling effect; my memories normally last around 2-3 years before I can’t pull them back up without a specific reminder, and it has to be mores specific the longer ago we’re talking about. I’ve yet to find anything t hat triggers for more than about 10 years back.

I’m being nit picky here, and I normally love your posts, but I’ve noticed a trend of some ableist/saneist language I’m some of your posts that to come extent loses me on your message. When you say “derp” you e using a slur against certain disabled people, and many people consider it on part with the r-word. And when you say “cray-cray” you’re using a derogatory word against those who have mental health issues.

And when you use these things in the context of “bad” and undesirable, you contribute some micro-aggressions to the problem. Obviously I’m not telling you that you HAVE to stop, I’m just saying it’s something to think about.

“Cray-cray” is deliberately chosen because it doesn’t bear the same overt association with mental illness, and I’m sorry, but I don’t buy the insinuation that “derp” is connected to disability. It’s a neologism only a year or two old that never, in all the times I’ve seen it, has ever ever been associated with developmental disability. I’ve been very deliberately trying to work “crazy”, “insane”, etc. out of my writing, and what you’re pointing out as ableist are actually my attempts at adapting to that.

Ok, well “cray-cray” I think is pretty obviously a shortened phrase of “crazy.” I usually end up asking people what they really meant. Rather than using “replacement” words that convey the same message. I mean, if I cringe every time I see cray-cray am I just being delusional?

And I’ve seen enough people complain about the usage derp that I started to do some research a ways back. While some internet culture seems to use it pretty innocuously, it often seems associated with an ableist context.

A quick search on google for “derp ableism” resulted in several results of people being frustrated with the term, and his history. (i’ve seen a number of explanations for the origin of the words ‘herp/derp’ and they all have somewhat ableist roots, some of them waaay more offensive than others)

Again, I think it’s important to recognize that I’m not criticizing you as a person, nor am I implying that you are ableist/saneist. Just that we all have a tendency to use language like that sometimes…

At the very least, all I’m doing is relaying a message I’ve heard from people who have asked ME to stop using words like that, based on their own history with those words or someone close to them’s history. These are words that clearly someone at some point has been hurt by and they feel they are slurs/derogatory/words that are used to hurt them. And since I’m in a privileged position and I’ve got no real right to tell someone when they shouldn’t be hurt by my words (especially when I can see the strong connection that could be made) I take them at their word. Just like I’d hope people would take me at my word on hispanic slurs or trans slurs (they usually don’t and i’m set up to have to “proove” my slur)

This person with psychiatric diagnoses really wishes the activists of the internet would STFU about words like “cray-cray” and “derp” and give a shit about things like the abuse of patients in certain psych hospitals, which I seldom see anyone write about in mainstream social justice spaces.